Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/423

Rh drunken taxi driver ran into us. I wasn’t hurt, but the violin, lying across my knees, was smashed into a thousand pieces. I didn’t know what it meant then; but since, I’ve seen so many beautiful old things smashed. . . I’ve become a fatalist.”

Claude watched his brooding head against the grey flint rock.

“You ought to have kept out of the whole thing. Any army man would say so.”

David’s head went back against the boulder, and he threw one of the, chestnuts lightly into the air. “Oh, one violinist more or less doesn’t matter! But who is ever going back to anything? That’s what I want to know!”

Claude felt guilty; as if David must have guessed what apostasy had been going on in his own mind this afternoon.

“You don’t believe we are going to get out of this war what we went in for, do you?” he asked suddenly.

“Absolutely not,” the other replied with cool indifference.

“Then I certainly don’t see what you’re here for!”

“Because in 1917 I was twenty-four years old, and able to bear arms. The war was put up to our generation. I don’t know what for; the sins of our fathers, probably. Certainly not to make the world safe for Democracy, or any rhetoric of that sort. When I was doing stretcher work, I had to tell myself over and over that nothing would come of it, but that it had to be. Sometimes, though, I think something must. . . . Nothing we expect, but something unforeseen.” He paused and shut his eyes. “You remember in the old mythology tales how, when the sons of the gods were born, the mothers always died in agony? Maybe it’s only Semele I’m thinking of. At any rate, I’ve sometimes wondered whether the young men of our time had to die to bring a new idea into the world. . . something Olympian. I’d like to know. I think I shall know.